‘It must have been a gorgeous house in its day. I mean, it still is, obviously, it’s just…’ she floundered.
‘Don’t worry. I know it’s in a state – no offence taken. The rectory was often the grandest house in small villages like this, not including the manor, of course. Back in the days when the vicar was the most important person after the land owner.’
‘How is it the house stayed in your family when it stopped being the actual rectory?’
‘I’m not sure. My great-grandparents must have bought it from the church at some point, I suppose.’ He shrugged.
‘Do you have any childhood memories of her? Of Hester Canning?’
‘No, none at all. Sorry. She died before I was born. I remember my grandfather, Thomas, though – Hester’s son; although he died when I was still just a boy.’
‘So this house passed to your parents? Did you grow up here?’
‘No, no. It passed to my uncle and aunt. My cousins lived here as children. I visited sometimes – a few Christmas holidays. The house only came to Dad when my uncle died ten years or so back.’
‘Not to your cousins?’
‘One died in a car accident when he was twenty-two; the other fell out with the family and moved to Australia. Not heard a word from her in fifteen years.’ He put two mugs of coffee on the work top, and caught her expression. ‘I know, I know. My family isn’t exactly blessed with luck or harmony.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Witness my own current situation,’ he added, almost to himself. ‘What about you? Domestic harmony or Jeremy Kyle Show?’ he asked. Leah smiled.
‘Domestic harmony, for the most part. We’re very conventional. Home counties, golden retrievers, that kind of thing. My mum is in the WI; Dad plays lawn bowls. You get the picture.’
‘Sounds nice. Wholesome. Do you see a lot of them?’
‘Yes. I suppose so. They never want to come up to London though – too loud for them. I always have to go home to see them.’
‘What made you move to London?’
‘What makes anybody? Work, friends, culture. Isn’t that why you moved there?’ she asked, without thinking. He stiffened, his face darkening.
‘I thought you didn’t know who I was or anything about me?’ he demanded. Leah held up a placating hand.
‘I googled you this morning. Sorry. You were so mysterious the first time we met…’ She tried to smile but Mark’s expression was thunderous.
‘For good reason,’ he said.
‘I know. I mean… I understand. I’m not going to ask you about it,’ she replied. He stared morosely into his coffee cup for a while, dark brows beetling, hooding his eyes.
‘Thank you.’
‘Here are the letters. Have a read,’ Leah said, quickly passing them over.
Mark scanned the pages. ‘Well,’ he said, as he let the sheets of paper fall back onto the counter. ‘I can see why you’re interested in them. Very dramatic, aren’t they? She was in a right knot about something. Living in “fear and suspicion”, and “everything so strange and dark…”’
‘I know. Nothing rings any bells, does it? Reading through them? No family gossip or legends or anything she could be referring to? Or any idea who she might have been writing to?’
‘Come on, Leah – this was nearly sixty years before I was born! I never even met the woman. The only family scandal I know about was the fairy thing. Not much of a scandal even – a guy manages to convince a handful of people of the existence of fairies. And then they all change their minds again,’ he said, in brief summary.
‘I wish she’d dated the letters. Or we had the envelopes with a dated postmark on, or something. If this theosophist guy was around a lot that year, there’s a chance she could have been writing to him, I suppose. He could be the dead soldier – Robin Durrant. I need to find out more about him. Like what is a theosophist, anyway?’
‘Never heard of it. Some odd branch of religion or spiritualism, clearly. A lot of people believed in a lot of strange things back then. Like God, for example.’ He smiled.
‘You shouldn’t joke about that – you’d be amazed how sensitive people can be about it.’
‘Oh, I know. Bit of a double standard, I’ve always thought. Anyone can come to my door and tell me the error of my ways according to their particular deity, but if I stand up and say that there is no God, people get very huffy.’
‘Sounds as though you’re speaking from experience?’
‘My sister-in-law. Just one of the many facets of this whole bloody mess.’
‘I thought you didn’t want to talk about it?’
‘I don’t,’ he said, with a quick, agitated shrug. He glanced away, out of the kitchen window, and Leah took a good look at his face. Long, straight nose, thick hair peppered with grey. He had a gaunt look, slightly starving; his spine curved into a weary slouch, shoulders fixed high and back, the bones sharp and angular beneath his faded jumper. His eyes slipped out of focus all too easily, gliding past her into the middle distance as if helplessly chasing thoughts that ran away with him. Suddenly, Leah saw how fragile he was – that he was stretched far too thin by life. She recognised the exhaustion dogging his every move – remembered it well from the long days of crisis after she’d left Ryan. It was there on the tip of her tongue: I know how you feel. Mark took a long breath and sighed sharply through his nose. ‘Are you hungry? Do you want some lunch?’ he asked.
‘Sure. Thanks.’
With Mark’s permission, Leah took herself on a tour of the house while he cracked eggs into a bowl and cut up mushrooms for an omelette. She climbed the wide staircase with a sense of growing excitement, a childish effervescence that made her smile to herself, made her breathe a little faster. Desiccated floorboards squealed beneath her feet, for if the ground floor was tainted with damp, upstairs the air was as dry as old bones; so dry it prickled the back of her throat, made the threat of a sneeze linger maddeningly at the top of her nose. She looked into the master bedroom, which had been Mark’s father’s room until relatively recently. Curtains with big sprays of fat roses, once red, now a rusty brown like dried blood. A wardrobe, dressing table and chest of drawers, all too small for the wide room. The bed had a massive mahogany headboard, and was covered in piles of dusty feather duvets and eiderdowns, pillows gone the orangey-yellow of beeswax with the sweat and grease of generations of sleeping heads. The smell of it was at once familiar, repugnant, and comforting somehow. Like a favourite garment, unwashed and worn long enough to echo exactly the shape and smell of the body. A clock radio flashed 00:00 in red LED digits, giving a faint electric buzz each time the numbers lit up. There was a Teasmaid at least thirty years old; a dusty trouser press; a collection of wire coat hangers bundled on a hook behind the door. Leah stared into every corner of this sad, neglected room, finding it at once depressing and exciting. She was spying, but on a world so quiet, so out of date that it bore no resemblance to life as she knew it.
Through a doorway in one wall was the en suite bathroom: a trail of blue-grey limescale in the bath, channelling a steady drip of water from tap to plughole; a splayed and dishevelled toothbrush in a chipped yellow mug that said Rise ’n’ Shine! in bold letters on the side; a razor furred with dried soap and traces of stubble. The carpet was dark with mildew around the sink and toilet pedestals; the lace curtains had moss growing along the hem, where the window did not shut properly and a small puddle of rain had found its way onto the sill. Leah pushed the window open slightly and peered out, over the back garden where the grass was knee-high, choppy and beige after the winter frosts. To the far left she could just see the high wall of a courtyard, and a selection of haphazard outbuildings, one of which had a gaping hole in its roof. Two fat wood pigeons huddled up to one another on the ridge tiles, their feathers fluffed against the rain.